


The Science of Seduction

by OhAine



Series: Simple Chemistry [10]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Dubious maths, F/M, Fluff, Humour, Matchmaking Mummy, Mathematician Mummy, Post TFP, Sherlolly - Freeform, Snark, mollock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-09
Updated: 2018-11-09
Packaged: 2019-08-21 06:41:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16571585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OhAine/pseuds/OhAine
Summary: There's only one woman in the whole world who's right for Sherlock Holmes — Mummy should know, she's done the maths.





	The Science of Seduction

**Author's Note:**

  * For [likingthistoomuch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/likingthistoomuch/gifts).



> Belated and happy birthday to you Gee, my dearest friend xx
> 
> Beta read by the treasure that is satin_doll. Thank you Kat x
> 
> Inspired by Dr Hannah Fry’s book, The Mathematics of Love. For those who don’t know, Mellonia is the goddess of bees. 
> 
> Warning: Purely for gratuitous comedic and shipping purposes there’s a brief mention of spermatozoa wanting to end it all. Spoiler alert: they don’t.
> 
> Disclaimer 1: The opinions expressed by Mrs Holmes in this story are her own and in no way reflect the author’s appreciation for her son’s fine form. 
> 
> Disclaimer 2: The maths & statistics are real, but licence has been taken with their use.
> 
> Disclaimer 3: I own nothing but the typos.

_The world is woven from billions of lives, every strand crossing every other. If you could attenuate to every strand of quivering data, the future would be entirely calculable, as inevitable as mathematics._

_– Sherlock Holmes, The Six Thatchers._

 

oOo

 

Sherlock had very nearly escaped unscathed from his monthly visit to Sussex when Mellonia Holmes told her son that she had taken it upon herself to find him a wife.

He could bolt for the door, except that would probably end up with him having to endure a visit from Mycroft – one where he’d be accused of upsetting Mummy, then Sherlock would not only have to take the train for a second visit but also have to listen to her prattle on about hurt feelings,  _dull dull dull,_  as well as whatever it was she was so determined to have him hear in the first place. He weighed up his options and things being,  _well_ , what they were, he decided to just rip the plaster off and get it over with. 

Sherlock did his best impersonation of a bunny that  _hadn’t_   been caught in the headlights of a very large truck, and in a cloud of billowing dark wool and petulantly bouncing curls flopped back into the fireside chair he’d only just vacated. 

“Don’t you have something better to do with your time than torture me? A coven to convene? An apocalypse to oversee?”

“Don’t be impertinent,” Mummy said rather airily, producing a small black velvet ring box from her cardigan pocket and placing it on the table between them next to the plate of gingernuts he’d been picking at. 

The box was one he knew well. It had once sat on his grandmother’s dressing table, and held the diamond solitaire ring his grandfather had long ago presented to his lady love on bended knee. 

 _Oh. Bugger._  If Mummy had gone to the trouble of taking the ring from the family vault, it meant – in John’s vernacular – something spectacularly _not good_.

“I want grandchildren while I’m still able to pick them up – and despite what your lady friends may say in the heat of the moment your seed isn’t like fine wine, it isn’t getting better with age. It’s time you settled down before your swimmers all commit hari-kari in the throes of some existentialist crisis brought on by not fulfilling their life’s purpose.” She paused for a beat. “Assuming, of course, that your tight trousers haven’t left you firing blanks. _They haven’t, have they?”_

“Oh for _—  No!”_

“Good. It’ll be much easier if your equipment is in adequate working order.” 

“ _Oh Lord_ ,” Sherlock sang, squirming in his seat.

“And it is just  _lady_  friends? I mean, Father and I know about that boy when you were seventeen but everyone experiments at that age. Not that I mind if it isn’t,” she carried on ignoring her son’s obvious embarrassment to such a degree that one might say she was actually enjoying it. “After all, your uncle was, well, an equal opportunist when it came to that sort of thing. Never had any shortage of admirers did Rudy. He cut such a striking figure in an evening gown. It just goes to show that the right underpants can work miracles, because in the flesh his arse was as flat as a pancake, but then he’d slip into those knickers and all sorts would come running from far and wide just to cop a feel of his fabulous bottom—” 

Sherlock closed his eyes. “Oh. Dear. God. Mother, please stop taking.”

“—Father and I never minded. Live and let live, we always said. So it’s fine with me if there are other variables in your equation, but reducing them at the outset makes the mathematics far less complicated.”

In the seat opposite his mother, Sherlock – still recovering from the onslaught of therapy-requiring images that her description of his uncle had induced – grew perfectly still. “ _Mathematics?”_

“I’ve left you to your own devices for forty two years—”

“Forty one. And three quarters.”

“—and I’m no closer to being a grandmother than Mycroft is to being slimmer of the year. You simply can’t be trusted to find someone by yourself, so I’ve taken it on as a sort of project, applying a scientific methodology to the problem.” 

Sherlock blinked at her in utter astonishment. “You can’t be serious.”

“Why not? It’s a perfectly logical solution. Dating sites have been using maths for years to narrow down the field for slightly odd ones like you who’ve been left on the shelf.”

“And you’ve managed to do that, have you? Narrow the field?”

“I have. By adapting the Drake Equation.”

_Now they were getting to the crux of this nonsense._

There had been an inquest you see, after Sherrinford.  And Mummy had for the first time set eyes on Miss Molly Hooper.

Quietly, but sharp as a razor, her gaze had flitted between Sherlock and Molly as she gave evidence to the Cabinet Office about The Phone Call (that had now taken on a sort of trademark status in Sherlock’s mind). All the more worrying was that when Sherlock spoke to give  _his_  evidence, her watchful eyes rested solely on Molly who in turn watched the floor ever so carefully, head bowed and slender shoulders weighed down with Sherlock’s words.

There and then he knew he was in trouble, because the way his mother had looked at Molly Hooper could mean nothing good for Sherlock Holmes.

Molly and he—

Well, their relationship had always been difficult to define, but especially now. Things had been going decidedly downhill between them since... _since_. And as the months went by they’d grown further and further apart. Molly had a life to get on with, Sherlock had The Work: it was for the best. Really, it was the only way it  _could_  be. 

 _What of it_ , thought he,  _if_ _every Friday night he had chips from the same place they used to go to after cases, and so what if he ate them with mayonnaise instead of ketchup because that was the way she liked them_. It could be of no more consequence than the fact that sometimes he sat outside her flat at night just to know that she was safe as she slept. And it meant precisely nothing if there were nights when he woke with damp lashes and a dreamlike memory of gentle brown eyes that glittered and shone when they looked in his direction. 

He did not think about her as he ate his toast every morning. He did not think about her when he stalked the streets of London in search of distraction. Nor when he sat alone in his flat. Or on the wooden bench outside of Bart’s. She did not once cross his mind when he used her favourite mug to make tea. And he absolutely, irrefutably,  _undeniably_  did not think about her three nights ago when she went on her first date since he said what he said, and she said what she said, neither thing being unsayable, leaving the words hanging over their heads in cartoon speech bubbles like little black rain clouds that poured daily on their respective parades. 

“The Drake equation?” he asked, brows knitted together, wondering how on Earth Mummy was going to use an equation designed by scientists to estimate the number of evolved civilisations that might exist in our galaxy to convince him of something he didn’t wish to be convinced of.

“Yes! Though I suspected at the outset that finding someone—”

_Insert Molly Hooper here, for he knew that’s who the ‘someone’ was that Mummy had in mind._

“—who could tolerate you would be far more difficult than searching for E.T.” Mummy carried on, explaining how she’d substituted the number of Earth like planets for women (because, yes, he could concede that apart from happy youthful adventures it was in fact a lady – or rather  _ladies_ , because it wasn’t anyone in particular,  _Oh No!_  – who made his gentleman parts feel fuzzy these days, and conveniently for Mummy’s machinations Molly was, _in fact_ , a woman), intelligence for education ( _Oh let me guess,_  Sherlock interjected,  _preferably a PhD,_ to which Mummy grinned like a shark who sensed there was blood in the water) and the fraction of planets capable of supporting life for the fraction of women who were age appropriate. 

“Childbearing age at a minimum, obviously. But she also needs to be close to your own so you’d have things in common,” she said prattling on in the same self-satisfied, quasi-academic tone that she’d begun with.

Sherlock raised an eyebrow. “Like mad parents and psychopathic siblings?” 

“I was thinking more about music and television programs, dear. I said I wanted grand-babies, not crack-babies. Now,” Mummy said as Sherlock scowled, “I used optimal stopping theory to narrow the range. You were a late bloomer, that governess from Hampshire – the one you lost your virginity to – what was her name again? Violet Hunter, wasn’t it?”

Sherlock gaped like a fish out of water.

“Yes! That’s the one! Pity that didn’t work out, she had wonderfully large childbearing hips, perfectly capable of dealing with any offspring who might have inherited your head. That puts the lower age value at twenty two and the upper value where you are now—”

“Forty one,” Sherlock said at precisely the same moment his mother said “—Forty two. And if, as the theory suggests, we discount the first thirty seven percent of your dalliances then your match is the first woman you met after the age of twenty nine who was at least marginally better than everyone you’d met before—”

“Oh what a romantic Valentine’s card that would be.  _My darling wife, you are slightly less terrible than the first thirty seven percent of people I dated…_ ”

“I’d imagine it’s more romantic than you usually manage. Fortunately for you romance has nothing to do with copulation. But attraction does, so I substituted the communication variable for women who would find you attractive – which, let me tell you, with your weak chin and irregularly sized nostrils severely restricted the outcome. Of course there’s always the chance that you’ll open your mouth and scare them off anyway, but there’s only so much help science can give you. Evolutionarily speaking you make a poor candidate for mating. Oh now Sherlock don’t frown, it’ll cause even more wrinkles.”

“I—” Sherlock gasped, exploratory fingertips probing his furrowed brow, “I do  _not_  have wrinkles!”

“Don’t be missish. I though you knew you weren’t a hottie. In fact I’d always assumed that’s why you kept John around: you know, the decoy effect – being so unattractive he distracted others from your…  _you-ness—”_

He gave her a long, narrow eyed look, careful to not crease his forehead. 

“—so believe me when I tell you that you need help. There are only twenty six women in all of Britain who would make a suitable match.”

Sherlock looked heavenward for patience. “You’re making that up.”

“You know my methods darling, verisimilitude in all things. You’re very good on paper, but the reality can be a little more challenging.”

“Must be genetic.”

“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that.”

“I’d really rather you didn’t,” Sherlock smirked and Mummy pursed her lips. 

“So go on then,” he said, “who exactly are these owners of hips with sufficient girth to birth my bobble-headed progeny?”

“Oh no, dear! There might be twenty six candidates but they also have to find  _you_  attractive, and most women think you’re a bit of a minger. That reduces the plurality.”

“To?”

“One.”

Sherlock scowled and Mummy sat back, he supposed to let him digest the fact that only Molly Hooper would tolerate his misshapen nasal cavity and stew in the knowledge that– even if her hips were too narrow – only she had the capacity to love him. 

“And does this Venus of the Home Counties have a name?”

Mummy paused with dramatic effect.

“Stella Hopkins.”

Sherlock blinked at his mother, and his heart did a strange fluttering thing that was decidedly unpleasant. 

“I’m sure you’ve noticed DI Hopkins is very pretty. Obviously good genes. Right age range. Clever too. She already finds your funny little face attractive if what Lestrade says is to be believed, so only a minimal amount of wooing will be required on your part. She’s been on the other end of your poor manners and eccentricities more than once, so that shouldn’t be an issue either. Mathematically speaking she’s the perfect partner for you. I’d say I’ve done rather well, wouldn’t you?”

The question was an academic one, of course, because he had no intention of slipping his grandmother’s ring onto the clawed hand of any creature his mother was likely to conjure from her cauldron. 

 _But Stella Hopkins?_  

Yes, she was all the things Mummy said, except—

She wasn’t the one who caused him to lie awake at night thinking about the exact colour of her eyes or the softness of her skin.

Stella Hopkins had never saved his life. 

Or loved him in spite of everything he was.

Stella Hopkins was not the one _he_  loved.

_Stella Hopkins was not…was not…_

Right at that moment the flutter beneath his breast bone became an almost unbearable ache, and a longing for something he had tried very hard not to want almost stopped his heart from beating. 

 

Mellonia watched her beautiful boy’s light dim. Whatever thoughts were running through his head she felt for sure that they were of just one person. “I did of course wonder about Molly Hooper—” 

With relief she saw the words hit target: Sherlock’s lashes blinked over newly brightened eyes.

“—but you met her at twenty eight, before your optimal stopping point, so naturally I discounted her.” With a sigh Mummy rose to sit on the armrest of Sherlock’s chair and put her arms about him, resting her head on top of his she softly said, “But that’s not something you can do so easily, now is it?”

“ _Mummy_ ,” he warned.

“I’ve only ever wanted your happiness. And you’re not happy.”

“I’m— I’m fine.”

“You’re lonely.”

He huffed in frustration. “And marrying Stella Hopkins will fix that?”

“No, my darling. Because no matter how perfect she is  _for_  you, she’s not perfect  _to_  you. But there is someone who is. And she’s the only one who’ll do.” She kissed his mop of curls. “So tell me, what is it that you’re so afraid of?”

For the longest time he didn’t speak, but instead studied the worn velvet ring box:  _inscrutable_ ,  _that boy of hers_. 

In the end he said, “I have no idea how to even begin to love someone like Molly...” and his words died away, voice cracking on the last consonant along with Mellonia’s heart. 

“Why don’t you just try being yourself?”

He barked a bitter laugh. “That’s an appalling piece of advice.”

“ _Sherlock_.”  Mellonia brushed his hair from his forehead and cupped his cheek, turning his face upward to look at her. “You must know I was only teasing you to make a point. To me, you are perfect—” 

He closed his eyes and she held him tighter.

“—as you are to Molly. The way she looks at you, like you hold the sun and the moon in your hands. And the way you look at her too… Believe me when I tell you, you already love each other the way you both need to be loved.”

She held him (in as much as her boy ever allowed anyone to hold him) hoping that a little of the comfort she was trying to give would somehow make its way through that stubborn, thick head of his, along with the wisdom of a mother who knew that her child was suffering needlessly by his own hand.  _Did she really care about grandchildren, or the eligible ladies of London?_   _No,_   _of course not._ But she was eighty three years old and had yet to see one of her children settled. Time was running out to remedy the mistakes of the past, to fix the faults of thinking that she once valued as a protection, but that she now saw for what they were. All she’d ever wanted was for him to be safe, and Molly –  _she was sure of it_  – was the only person who could give him that.

Chances were none of this fatuous nonsense about the mathematics of love would work. But something had to be done. To not at the very least try would be to fail him. All his life she’d watched him wage battles, ones she’d taught him to defend. Somewhere along the way she’d somehow forgotten to teach him the most important lesson of all: when to lay down his arms.

Eventually, Sherlock opened his eyes, blinking up at her; too much sadness, too much emptiness there. 

He sighed voicelessly. “I have to go. I’ve a train to catch.”

“Will you at least think about what I’ve said?”

He took her hands and kissed the back of each, lingering in a way that wasn’t his usual rush back to Baker Street, seemingly unwilling to let go.

“I—” he said then shook his head and stood, coming to himself as the moment passed. “Thank you for the biscuits.”

Mellonia watched him grab at the plate of biscuits, stuffing the last gingernut into his pocket as he fled, coat flapping behind him like a cape. Already, she was trying to figure out what her next move should be. 

Maybe a word with Mycroft. 

Or John…

With a heavy heart she set about clearing away the tea things. 

And then she stopped.

For a moment she just stood and stared at the table, head cocked to one side, sure that her old eyes were playing tricks on her. But no. 

_Perhaps all was not lost._

On the plate, at the centre of the mess of napkins and crumbs, there was still one biscuit left: Sherlock hadn’t taken the last one after all. 

But something was making its way back to Baker Street with him. 

Mellonia picked up the now empty ring box, snapping it shut with a thought that made her tired heart soar: the diamond had once been so beautiful on her mother’s hand. 

But it was going to be  _breath-taking_  on Molly’s.


End file.
